That’s a very simple example. But what would it be like if Instagram photos faded over time (unless you did something to preserved every so often). Or if friends on Facebook were given access rights to your profile based on how often you interacted with them – if you haven’t interacted with then recently they get fewer and fewer access rights to your profile then drop off your list of friends (“Connect with James in the next month or you’ll lose his connection.”). Or if tweets that weren’t retweeted, replied to, linked to or shared just fell off the bottom – content would have to prove that it’s worth keeping.

People could be made to be responsible for and tend the trail of data they leave behind or it would gradually disappear. It’s easy to suspect that most of it wouldn’t be missed. @adrianshort pointed me towards Wabi-sabi, I’m not going to pretend to be an know much about that, but what if our information system had some of this built in?

I love this. It’s a trivial punishment guaranteed to bring huge publicity to the original defamation. If Fahmi Fadzil wanted to spread the message that his friend had been treated badly he couldn’t have wished for anything more effective than his punishment. A nice twist on the Streisand Effect.

My confession would be a terrible job of photoshopping an orange faced Martin Brundle into a photo of the other F1 TV presenters. I tried to colour match his skin so it fitted in, but the client said he really was orange and made me put him back to his image’s original day-glow brightness. It was thankfully a long time ago.